'A Streetcar Named Desire'

Lisa Tomasetti

The Sydney Theatre Company production of Tennessee Williams' classic starring Co-Artistic Director Cate Blanchett as Blanche DuBois travels this fall to the U.S. for stops in Washington, D.C., and Brooklyn, New York. Directed by Liv Ullmann, the staging promises to shed fresh light on a character who has depended for too long on the kindness of strangers when what she really needs is the unsentimental ferocity of theater artists. But will Ullmann take as ruthless an approach to the text as Ingmar Bergman, the director who helped shape her remarkable carer, famously did when he nontraditionally staged the play? Blanchett, always up for a little risk-taking, should be able to handle the intensity either way. And as a master of dialects and demeanors, she should have no problem making Blanche's faded Southern belle charm completely her own. John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, D.C., opens Oct. 31, Brooklyn Academy of Music, opens Dec. 1.

The Sydney Theatre Company production of Tennessee Williams' classic starring Co-Artistic Director Cate Blanchett as Blanche DuBois travels this fall to the U.S. for stops in Washington, D.C., and Brooklyn, New York. Directed by Liv Ullmann, the staging promises to shed fresh light on a character who has depended for too long on the kindness of strangers when what she really needs is the unsentimental ferocity of theater artists. But will Ullmann take as ruthless an approach to the text as Ingmar Bergman, the director who helped shape her remarkable carer, famously did when he nontraditionally staged the play? Blanchett, always up for a little risk-taking, should be able to handle the intensity either way. And as a master of dialects and demeanors, she should have no problem making Blanche's faded Southern belle charm completely her own. John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, D.C., opens Oct. 31, Brooklyn Academy of Music, opens Dec. 1.